MacBook Neo Shortage: Apple's Best Problem to Have

Try ordering a MacBook Neo from Apple this week and you'll find yourself waiting two to three weeks for delivery. Try a few of the colours and the wait stretches further. The £599 laptop Apple launched in March has become its biggest first-time-buyer hit in years, and now the company is stuck with a problem most product managers would dream of: it might run out of stock before it can satisfy demand.

The reason has nothing to do with factories or aluminium supply. It comes down to a single chip, the A18 Pro, that the entire MacBook Neo line was built around. And the more I read about how Apple got the Neo to £599 in the first place, the more interesting this whole MacBook Neo shortage becomes.

How the MacBook Neo became a victim of its own success

Two weeks after pre-orders opened, Tim Cook said the Neo had given Apple its "best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers". That phrase matters. It means Apple is converting Windows users, Chromebook users, and people who'd never have considered a Mac at the existing price points. The Neo isn't just selling well, it's selling to the audience Apple has been trying to reach for years.

Reports suggest Apple originally planned to build around 5 to 6 million units before moving on to a successor. According to former Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan, who broke this story in his Culpium newsletter, that ceiling is now in sight far faster than expected. Foxconn and Quanta, the two assemblers building the laptop in Vietnam and China, are reportedly waiting on a decision about whether to keep going. That decision is genuinely complicated.

If you've read my MacBook Neo review, the popularity won't surprise you. What's interesting is what Apple does next.

Why Apple is stuck on a single chip

Here's the bit that surprised me. The MacBook Neo doesn't run on a fresh batch of silicon. It runs on what's left over from the iPhone 16 Pro production line.

When TSMC manufactures the A18 Pro, some chips come off the line with a slightly faulty GPU core. The full chip has six GPU cores; the binned ones have five. In most years these would be discarded, but Apple decided to use them in the Neo instead. As Ben Thompson at Stratechery pointed out, you could argue these chips were effectively free for Apple, which is one of the central reasons the Neo lands at £599 rather than £799.

The catch is that Apple stopped manufacturing the A18 Pro entirely. The iPhone 17 Pro now uses the A19 Pro, and TSMC's N3E process, the second-generation 3nm node the A18 Pro was built on, is reportedly sold out and running at full capacity. So when Apple's stockpile of binned A18 Pros runs dry, there isn't another batch waiting in a warehouse.

This is what makes the MacBook Neo shortage genuinely hard to solve. It's not a logistics problem, it's a chip problem, and the chip itself isn't being made any more.

The four options Apple has on the table

There aren't many neat solutions here, and each one hurts somewhere.

The first is to ask TSMC for a fresh batch of A18 Pro wafers. Technically possible, commercially painful. Apple would be paying full price for chips it had been getting for next to nothing, and the margins that made the Neo possible would collapse. TSMC's other customers are also queued up for the same N3E capacity, so Apple would likely need to pay a premium just to jump the line.

The second is to discontinue the £599 model and leave only the £699 version with 512GB and Touch ID on sale. This works on paper but undoes the entire marketing story Apple has built around the Neo since launch. The £599 price is the headline, and walking away from it would be a strategic own goal.

The third is to bring forward the second-generation MacBook Neo, originally planned for 2027, and ship it with a binned A19 Pro chip. Culpan reports the next-gen Neo is expected to ship with 12GB of RAM and the A19 Pro left over from iPhone 17 Pro production. Apple just hasn't built up the stockpile yet.

The fourth is to accept thinner margins, take the financial hit, and keep the £599 Neo on shelves while it figures out the next move. Given how much Apple has riding on first-time Mac buyers right now, this is more likely than people are giving it credit for.

What probably actually happens

Jason Snell at Six Colors made the most useful observation I've read on this whole story. Apple isn't really facing a dilemma in the way most coverage frames it. Of course Apple knows it might have a hit on its hands. Every product launch comes with a contingency plan for runaway success.

What's likely going on is that Apple has always intended to swap the A18 Pro out for an A19 Pro the moment the bin starts running low. The MacBook Neo's chassis was almost certainly designed to take a new chip with very little engineering work, because redesigning a budget laptop's body every year would obliterate the margins that make it possible. The chip changes, the laptop stays the same.

Snell also raises a clever middle path: split the line. Push the A19 Pro into the £699 model first, keep shipping A18 Pro chips in the £599 model until they're gone, then drop the A19 down to the entry tier once the A18 inventory is exhausted. That kind of move would barely make headlines, which is sort of the point.

It's worth remembering this is a Mac that, as I argued in What Makes a Mac a Mac?, was deliberately built around a different set of priorities than the rest of the lineup. A quiet chip swap fits that philosophy.

Should you buy a MacBook Neo now or wait?

My honest take: if you need a laptop today and the Neo fits the work you'd actually do on it, buy it. Two to three weeks is inconvenient but it isn't months. The eventual chip swap will give you marginally better performance and probably 12GB of RAM, but the A18 Pro version is already plenty for the people the Neo is aimed at. The 8GB of unified memory has been a non-issue in everyday use, and macOS handles it far better than any Windows laptop in this price bracket can.

If you're a heavier multitasker, a developer, or you want this laptop to last seven or eight years rather than four or five, waiting for the A19 Pro version probably makes sense. The larger memory ceiling alone is worth holding off for. Just don't expect the price to drop. £599 is the line Apple has drawn in the sand, and I don't see it moving.

FAQ

Why is the MacBook Neo sold out?

The MacBook Neo runs on binned A18 Pro chips left over from iPhone 16 Pro production. Apple no longer manufactures the A18 Pro, and demand has been higher than the original 5 to 6 million unit plan. Wait times at Apple's online store are currently two to three weeks across most colours.

When will the MacBook Neo 2 be released?

The next-generation MacBook Neo with an A19 Pro chip and 12GB of RAM was originally planned for mid-2027, but the chip shortage may push Apple to release it sooner. Late 2026 or early 2027 looks plausible based on current reporting.

Will Apple raise the MacBook Neo's price?

Unlikely. £599 is core to the Neo's marketing and to its appeal with first-time Mac buyers. Apple is more likely to absorb tighter margins or accelerate the next-gen model than walk away from the headline price.